Sweeping curriculum, finance, testing changes to transform schools

Aug. 18, 2013

Updated Aug. 31, 2014 9:59 p.m.

1 of 8

Teachers in the La Habra City School District, including fifth-grade teachers Michelle Atkinson, left, and Julie Rashford, attend an all-day course on how to use iPads to aid students in reaching Common Core standards. They both teach at Las Positas Elementary School. Twenty teachers took part in the class. H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

1 of 8

Fourth-grade teacher Kortni Ingebrigtsen smiles as she watches a video of children solving math problems in creative ways during the Common Core Math Summer Institute at the offices of Santa Ana Unified School District on Wednesday. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

1 of 8

Teachers in the La Habra City School District are using iPads and other technologies to help students meet Common Core requirements. In the district, 78 percent of students are at or below the poverty level, a district official said. Half of its students are English learners. H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Teachers Kortni Ingebrigtsen, left, and Beth Covner, right, get advice from instructor Mariana Alwell during the Common Core Math Summer Institute at the offices of Santa Ana Unified School District on Wednesday. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

1 of 8

Instructor Mariana Alwell, with the Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative, teaches during the Common Core Math Summer Institute at the offices of Santa Ana Unified School District on Wednesday. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

1 of 8

Janna Canzone listens to instructors during the Common Core Math Summer Institute at the offices for Santa Ana Unified School District on Wednesday. Canzone will be giving teacher refresher courses for teaching the core requirements as the year progresses. She was in this class as preparation. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

1965: Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides federal money for low-income students and creates Title I and bilingual education programs.

1972: Senate Bill 90 guarantees each California school district a set level of funding.

1978: Proposition 13 amends the state Constitution to limit property tax rates and tax rate increases. The resulting loss of tax revenue decreases education funding. Resulting legislation solidifies state control of school funding.

1988: Proposition 98 amends the state Constitution to guarantee a minimum amount of educational funding from the state. The law also ensures that funding will grow each year with the economy and the number of enrolled students.

1997: California adopts new English- and math-content standards, declaring them to be a door to success for all students and the start of a surge toward excellence in our schools.

2002: No Child Left Behind Act is signed by President George W. Bush, reauthorizing 1965's education act. It requires states to develop assessment standards to receive federal funding and adds sanctions for those that fall short of federal testing targets.

2009: California cuts billions from schools – a pattern which continues until 2012-13. To ease the blow from financial cuts, state lawmakers allow districts to transfer funds from about 40 specific programs to other educational purposes through 2014-15. New laws also allow districts and schools to cut up to five days of instruction without penalty through July 2015.

2009: The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 gives money to local districts to repair and update schools and further fund Head Start, Pell Grants and other programs.

2010: California, along with most other states, adopts Common Core State Standards to provide a consistent approach in math and English language arts.

2013: Gov. Jerry Brown's Local Control Funding Formula proposal is signed into law, increasing district control of educational spending. It provides more money to all schools, with extra funding for the neediest students.

Teachers in the La Habra City School District, including fifth-grade teachers Michelle Atkinson, left, and Julie Rashford, attend an all-day course on how to use iPads to aid students in reaching Common Core standards. They both teach at Las Positas Elementary School. Twenty teachers took part in the class. H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Just a week after summer break began, Imperial Middle School science teachers Csilla Koppany and Pamela Carter returned to their La Habra campus, lattes in hand, with a big task to tackle: weaving new English language-arts standards into their science curriculum.

Those standards demand that students cite text to support their analyses, provide accurate summaries and follow multi-step procedures when they carry out experiments.

“We're definitely using more articles and literature and short articles talking about more current affairs,” Koppany said. “It was definitely a good 16 hours of us sitting down and really putting our heads together. … We'll need to adjust as we see fit, but we feel much better and secure as we begin the new year.”

The duo is far from alone.

Across California, educators at all levels of the K-12 system are preparing for the most sweeping shift in school operations in 35 years – an overhaul that radically redefines curriculum, financial control, testing and even teacher training.

These changes will provide unprecedented opportunities for school leaders to shape educational programs, allow teachers to deeply explore topics by streamlining curriculum and to push students to demonstrate their understanding on comprehensive new tests.

But education experts also warn that the curriculum and financial changes herald higher expectations and the danger of pitfalls.

“There will be a lot pressure on local education authorities in that you can't blame Sacramento anymore,” said Ted Lempert, president of the education advocacy organization Children Now.

PREPARING FOR CHALLENGES

The Common Core State Standards, a nationwide curriculum for English and math, is taking hold in California schools this year and next, when it will become mandated. Common Core transforms a California standards program that had been touted as a major game changer when it was adopted in 1997.

“In the big picture, we are going from a system in which every state has sat down and decided what every student ought to know at every grade level, to a system in which virtually every state now has agreed to the same set of expectations for students,” UC Irvine education professor Thurston Domina said. “In California’s case, those expectations are very different in style and in content from the current standards.”

For longtime educators who have witnessed numerous education reform attempts over the years, excitement is tempered by the first-hand knowledge that reforms can all too easily fail.

“There is a little bit of world weariness in people who have been around for a bit,” Domina said. “But not as much as I would expect. People seem enthusiastic.”

But enthusiasm alone isn’t enough.

School leaders know substantial training will be needed so all teachers are ready for the increased demands of a system that requires them to dig deeper into every topic, and places an emphasis on comprehensive, written responses and process-revealing math answers.

“We have a large percentage of our teachers who came on board in the late ’90s early 2000s who were trained in the CST world – the world of let’s just bubble in the answer,” said Elizabeth Novack, Anaheim Union High School District superintendent. “So there’s a lot of professional development that needs to help this category of teachers who need to think about instruction differently.”

Domina says other reform efforts also started out giving districts more flexibility, but that flexibility soon vanished.

“That was the idea with No Child Left Behind, too, but with NCLB the standards became so detailed and tightly linked to the end of the year assessments, they became so narrowly focused, that flexibility went out the window,” he said.

“But when you read the standards, I don’t think it’s crazy to be hopeful that it might create some more flexibility,” Domina said.

COMMON CORE BENEFITS

Streamlining the curriculum, said math teacher Michele Ogden of Irvine Unified, gives teachers more time to delve into complicated concepts.

“It will help students make sense of math, understanding and explaining and really interacting with math in a way they likely haven’t before,” Ogden said.

One change under Common Core is that English will be taught at a consistently high standard in all subjects – including in social studies and science.

To that end, Jennifer Rasic of the Placentia-Yorba Linda district and 34 other teachers attended a project-based learning institute held by Science@OC and the Buck Institute for Education in late July. There, they examined projects that incorporate English and math standards in a way teachers hope will be memorable for students.

Rasic plans to take her Golden Elementary School students out of the classroom to a local park to observe habitats for local animals. Her students will write their observations and thesis and use math in their scientific calculations.

Problem solving can easily be linked to real-world applications, and students will see the connection across subjects, said Sandra Lapham, director of curriculum and instruction at the Orange County Department of Education.

“For students, any time they have a chance to be able to learn in ways that are collaborative it gets them excited. They’re born with that interest in communicating and sharing their ideas and feeling heard and listening to others,” Ogden said.

The Orange County Department of Education has been offering Common Core training over the last two years, but it’s up to the teachers to participate.

“The local schools, as they always have, will select their curriculum, which will need to be standards-aligned,” Lapham said. “It is not a prescription for the teachers in how to teach. It gives teachers more control and freedom in how they teach the children and the strategies that work best with their kids.”

NEW SCIENCE STANDARDS COMING

Science teachers are facing a big adjustment as well, in the midst of the renewed emphasis on English and math curriculum.

Teachers are waiting to see whether Next Generation Science Standards, developed by teams in 26 states, will be adopted by California.

The State Board of Education is expected to review the proposal in September. If approved this fall, the standards could be implemented in the 2015-16 school year, said county science coordinator Dean Gilbert, who was among those creating the new standards.

“We’re literally going to restructure science from pre-K through secondary. It’s not just rearranging the chairs on the Titanic,” Gilbert said.

The new standards will align with Common Core and focus on hands-on experiments and student mastery of scientific topics, Gilbert said.

Both changes will take place even as schools gain more authority over their finances than they’ve had since the late 1970s. That’s when Proposition 13 limited property tax rates and led to state control over school funding.

CONTROL OVER FINANCES

On July 1, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the Local Control Funding Formula, a massive overhaul of public school funding. The system now directs more money to the state’s neediest students and provides districts with greater flexibility in spending funds once earmarked for specific functions, such as counseling.

“What the governor and the state are doing is to say, ‘We’ll hold you accountable to academic attainment of all students, but especially those who have been rutted at the bottom of the academic ladder,’” Mijares said.

How schools raise student scores is up to the districts.

“In that sense, it will spur on innovation and creativity regarding how can we help our students,” Mijares said. “Before, they might have felt constrained. Now, they’re going to be given the liberty to use sound judgment and do what you believe is best for students.”

Districts will have to constantly assess their goals and visions now that they have more control over financing, Anaheim’s Novack said.

“I think the challenge is as a superintendent, as a board of trustees, as a cabinet, is constantly communicating, ‘Here is our strategic plan, here is what we value in programs and services for kids, and this money is going to continue to follow our students,’“ Novack said.

“We really need to look at, ‘What is the vision for the school district?’“ she said. “Now that you have this control, are you going to keep your vision aligned with what you say you believe and value about student learning? Hopefully in Anaheim Union, the answer is yes.”

There will be pressure on parents, too, to monitor districts.

“Parents will need to be even more engaged on a local level,” said Lempert of Children Now. “Because the school board and local districts are going to have more discretion, it is going to be really imperative for a wide range of the community to be more engaged in helping determine those priorities.”

To further help districts prepare for the changes, California schools have been given one-time Common Core implementation funds to the tune of $1.25 billion. In Orange County, officials estimate that will be about $200 per student.

Districts plan to spend those funds on professional development, technology, instructional materials and more. Irvine Unified, for example, plans to spend some of the money on teacher mentors to help with Common Core implementation, district spokesman Ian Hanigan said.

Irvine’s Michele Ogden is one such teacher.

She’ll help other math teachers transition to Common Core instruction and learn from each other. Once teachers see what successful Common Core implementation looks like, they can duplicate the effort with their own students, she said.

To gauge student learning, California will be replacing its current standardized test with a computer-based test designed to examine proficiency in English and math. California, 24 other states and the Virgin Islands are members of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Mijares said he’s looking forward to having Orange County students take a more rigorous assessment.

“That will require fluency in technology and it will require our schools be booted up and ready to go,” Mijares said. “The pencil and paper days are gone.”

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.